It's the End of the World As We Know It and I Feel Fine

I've been putting off writing this because it's simply too depressing once you put it into words, but somebody has to say it and it seems to be my role. Everybody, especially economists like Krugman and Baker, have been dancing around this for weeks, unable to bring themselves to state baldly and simply the conclusion that all their recent analysis inevitably leads to. So I will.

The American economy is never - repeat NEVER - coming back.

It is on a downhill slide to Third World status where the two major classes are the very rich and the very poor and only an enfeebled, barely breathing middle class seperates them. Our manufacturing has been moved to low-wage, low-tax, low-regulation countries with corrupt govts (or I should say, perhaps, even more corrupt than ours). As much of the service sector as possible has been outsourced to those same countries. America itself has been successfully looted by the rich until there is, quite literally in many cases, no disposable income below the top 1%.

There is no one - repeat NO one - in authority prepared to challenge the corporate move to globalize profits outside the US through exploitation of foreign populations and resources. Money and HQ's are both being moved offshore and the Amerrican market is beginning to be dismissed by the Masters of the Universe as something they can live without. And plan to.

But in a very short time, a few years at most, it won't matter that they're doing nothing because there will no longer be anything they can do. The process will have advanced to the point where there will be no possible incentive or legal action that can reverse it. The simple fact is that the M's of the U have successfuly stripped the US economy practically to the bone. There isn't much left to steal compared to, say, China or India. Oh, there will be mopping-up operations that go on for a few decades, and a few more people will join the superrich class, but the rest of us will continue our slow descent into poverty kicking and screaming as the M's of the U vacuum up the last of the loot.

The American economy, for generations the wonder of the world and its engine since the end of WWII, has been taken apart piecemeal since Reagan and moved or sold off or canabalized for parts to enrich the MotU class. Like New Orleans before Katrina, we will never see its like again. The idea that unemployment is a problem of "training" is no less ludicrous than the idea that it is a problem of laziness. It is a problem of an economy in which there are no jobs because they've all been eliminated one way or another. "Re-training" is just another scam, another way to hide the truth of what they've done.

The old, strong middle class that made the US the envy of the world - normal workers owning their own homes - is shrinking into invisibility. Home ownership is beyond all but a comparative few, and the New Normal is an existence of seemingly endless working days and equally endless insecurity. The economic forces have already begun to move away from the US and toward Asia and Africa, and as Krugman pointed out last week, our society is devolving into a 19th century shithole with tarpaper-shack schools, roads made of rocks, and our elderly once again living on catfood.

The rich, living in gated communities and traveling by limo and chopper, never have to look at the misery they have wrought, the dung heap they've forced the rest of us to live on top of. They can and do pretend that everything is as it was. We who live down here know better.

I've been fighting against this for 30 years but as usual no one would acknowledge what was happening. Now it's too late. It's a done deal. In the US the fight is over and our greed and denial have caused us to lose it. Now it begins in Asia.

I hope they have better luck and more balls.

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Comments

[CMike]

There's a typo worth fixing in your penultimate sentence.

[Joseph H. Schinosi]

Since 1980 forward that is PRECISELY what has happened. I am originally from Pittsburgh but have lived in the DC Metro for over 25 years. I've witnessed the carnage firsthand both in the "Trench of Life" and in the "Halls of Power".

[vwclown]

Yoo hoo; anybody out there? Miss reading your posts... OK, I just miss you, Mick. Hope you are well. '_'

[vwclown]

PS Hi eRobin. I hope you have had a nice summer.

[mick]

CMike: Fixed, but it only matters if somebody reads it.

Joseph: I feel your pain.

Laura: Hi, kid. Yes, I'm here. Sort of. Took most of Aug off because it just got too depressing.